Biosocial Explanation Of Schizophrenia

Question 1

What did Marcus (1987) find?

Answer 1

Assessed parents on levels of hostility, consistency and over-involvement and found that all reported cases of schizophrenia had poor parenting rates, and had showed signs of neuropsychological abnormalities at the time of the initial assessment.

Question 2

Evidence criticising the Diathesis-Stress model and IDAS

Answer 2

Schizophrenia comes from various family background, but if it’s actually the environment that causes its developing there should a commonality between the families

• Deterministic
• combines nature and nurture
• holistic

Question 3

What does the Diathesis-stress model suggest?

Answer 3

Zubin and Spring (1977) proposed that stressful life events might trigger psychotic symptoms in individual who have an underlying biological predisposition to schizophrenia.

1) Genetic factors or pre-natal difficulties can lead to a biological vulnerability which may take the form of biochemical/neuroanatomical abnormalities.
2) Biological vulnerability can lead to a corresponding psychological vulnerability manifested as cognitive deficits, e.g. the inability to process information appropriately (Frith)
3) These deficits can then result in cognitive distortion and misattributions (Helmsley)
4) if the individual is exposed to stressful life events, these cognitive deficits can be made worse and go on to produce of the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia